Ryan and Brian do Crosswords

I just got home from a long day of hospitals, rehearsing, performing, and two unsatisfying sandwiches only to find that the New York Times has published a rather Wednesday-esque puzzle on Tuesday. My time on the applet is deceiving — I needed help to find my errors, since all one of them occurred in a place I’d have never been able to discern on my own.

This Ken Bessette puzzle features a Take-A-Letter-Away theme, and in this case it reduces a double letter appearance (in an “in-the-language” phrase) to a single letter, thus changing its meaning:

• 17A. Retired general? : ARRESTING OFFICER
• 37A. Late nobleman? : ACCOUNT PAST DUE
• 59A. Carillon call? : APPEAL TO THE CROWD – I have no idea what a “carillon” is. Merriam Webster does not like the word either, since 1.5 of its two definitions are self-referential:

1. a set of fixed chromatically tuned bells sounded by hammers controlled from a keyboard; an electronic instrument imitating a carillon

2. a composition for the carillon

Thank you, Merriam-Webster.

On the map of Greenwich Cove, a small neighborhood in Rhode Island, my problems happened at about the intersection of Division St. and Marlborough St., with the crossing of 1A. Kansas City University formerly known as College of Saint Teresa (AVILA) and 2D. Objets d’art (VIRTU). That V could have been just about any consonant, and it would have made as much sense. Apparently, VIRTU is Italian. To that, I say — really? On a Tuesday, you just opened up your Italian dictionary to a random page and then crossed it not only with a theme answer but with some college in Kansas that has a student body of fewer than 2,000 people? Wow. Wait — you’re going to tell me that if I knew where St. Teresa was born, I’d get this answer. Ah, but then you’re assuming that I know anything. Who do I look like, the Great Howard Barkin? Not so much…

Complicating things further, a few houses eastward on Division St. features the L in AVILA, an L which began 4D. Cobblers’ forms. A cobbler is a shoe-maker, right? A form is… a document? A model for something? A shape? Apparently, it’s like a mannequin foot on which shoes are repaired. In the Will Shortz era, LAST was used twice (one Wednesday and one Sunday).

All in all, a clever theme, but I was disappointed in my inability to even find my mistake, let alone correct it. Oh well. Better luck Wednesday.

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Last week, Dan Feyer (winner of the C Division) told us that Episode 16 was full of everything he liked… witty banter, lively debate, cutting edge terminology. Episode 17 promises to bring at least none of those things back!

Instead, we offer these fine elements to this week’s program:

• Brian turns out actually to be a musician!
• Ryan can’t form coherent thoughts!
• For the first time ever, we detail what a “flipnop” is.
• Plus: viewer mail, eight puzzles (Sunday to shining Sunday), and… well, it’s forty minutes long. There must be something else.

All that and more in an extended episode of Fill Me In. Enjoy!

 

 Fill Me In #017: Longer than it needs to be. (That's what she said.) [39:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oat.

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Solid Monday puzzle by Lynn Lempel.  The theme was:

61A. Unexpected wallet fattener … and what the circled words are (FOUNDMONEY)

The circled words were found in:

17A. British pop group with a repetitive name (DUrandURAN).  RAND.

25A. Kurdistan city on the Tigris (MOSUliraQ).  LIRA.

35A. On-ramp (HIGHWAyenTRANCE).  YEN.

51A. Welch’s soft drink (GRApesoDA).  PESO.

Well done theme.  I especially like the two meanings for “found money”.  The in-the-language meaning and the actual finding of money words in the puzzle.

1A. Like students in the Head Start program (PREK).  This one confused me for a good, long while.  I finally parsed it correctly once I was done.

16A. Double Stuf cookie (OREO).  Definitely need some pictures of Brian eating the official crossword cookie.

43A. Nipper the dog’s company (RCA).  Interesting story behind this famous advertisement.  The first Nipper lived in the 189os.

59A. Spanish artist Joan (MIRO).  I know of her completely from crosswords.

68A. Tale (STORY).  Speaking of stories, I want you all to hear this from me before you hear it on the street.  Brian and I saw Wall-E yesterday and it looks like I’m the only one in the universe who doesn’t like it.  I’m a big Pixar fan but this one didn’t do it for me.  I thought it was boring, over-complicated, and relied too much on the audience thinking this robot was the cutest character in the history of cinema.   For those of you who do like it (which I’m assuming is everybody) please write in to let me know why.  I’m very curious.

22D. In worse health (ILLER).  I’ve only heard this term when it refers to a rapper or someone who thinks they’re a rapper.

34D. Rebounds or assists (STAT).  A bit of misdirection here with the plurals in the clue and the non-plural answer.

50D. Mexican state bordering Arizona (SONORA).  I had an error here which took me a while to catch.  I put in SENORA as if the clue was referring to a Mexican woman standing next to Arizona.

Good puzzle to start the week.  And for you podcast fans, episode #17 of Fill Me In: The Podcast has been recorded and should be up by Tuesday morning.

Next stop, Tuesday.

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I’m not paying enough attention to authorship, but this puzzle is a Patrick Blindauer/Tony Orbach shared effort — and it seems that Patrick is teaming up with a number of creators recently… And why not? The puzzle is a lot of fun. The title is “Ten Grand Surplus,” and I figured right off the bat that we’d be adding a K to an otherwise “in-the-language” phrase, changing its meaning to something new in each of ten themed answers. (It turns out there were only nine themed answers, but one of them got $2,000. Hey anybody: I’ll be a themed answer if you give me $2,000.)

Before I begin, I’m going to offer Ryan a color choice for his addenda. Ryan, use this. It’s hideously orange, like your Cheetos shirt.

And now, the theme answers:

• 22A. Impatient kid’s plea at a zoo? : SHOW ME THE MONKEY
• 31A. Worrisome type at a china shop? : TRIPLE KLUTZ – I got this one first — or rather, I got the “klutz” part first. I had a lot of blank spacesin the top third of the grid, so I was pleased to not only get the gimmick, but “klutz” opened up most of Maine (on this crossword grid of New England).
• 48A. Seeking the right women’s tennis attire? : AFTER A SKORT – I had significant trouble here. I couldn’t get 34D. Golden pond fish (ORFE) or 35D. Be something special (RATE), leaving me with A–ERASKIRT. (Yes, I wrongly assume that the attire in question was a skirt.) I spent too much time trying to figure out what it meant without a K, and couldn’t think of what the hell SIRT or IRT would have meant.
• 54A. Warning sign on a pirate ship? : PLANK AHEAD
• 61A. Source of some inside humor? : WINK WINK SITUATION
• 71A. Tree doctor? : BARK TENDER
• 82A. Your basic “So this guy walks into a bar…”? : AVERAGE JOKE
• 94A. Use of steel wool, e.g.? : GUNK CONTROL
• 110A. Cheez whiz you could blow up? : INFLATABLE KRAFT – This proved to be another tough spot for not-so-smarter me, as I was certain that “blow up” meant explode. My mind was full of exploding cheese. And I couldn’t shake the thought. Still can’t, come to think of it. As New England goes, I’ve got cheese splattered all over Rhode Island.

I found myself mildly stumped in a handful of spots, and I will now tell you where they were. Skip this section if you don’t care about where I had trouble. 9D. Apple or pear is apparently POME. I know that pomme is French for apple, but I didn’t know there was an English version of the word — and that it meant more than apple. Apparently, it’s a whole field of fruits, including cotoneaster, hawthorn, loquat, medlar, quince, rowan, and whitebeam. I have heard of quince. When I was twelve, I was in a play in which 26 members of the cast played a complete set of spices and flavors from A to Z. My friend Andy played Quince. To be honest, he wasn’t my friend then (he was only five at the time, and we didn’t really meet until about 2000), but we discovered a few years ago that we had both been in that play. My sister played a fig.

The crossing at 16D/24A was rough on me. Of course it was a vowel, but I had ER-TU for 16D. “A Masked Ball” aria (the final answer: ERITU, and I don’t know if a space goes in there somewhere) and ED-NA for 24A. Minneapolis suburb (EDINA). I have never been to Minnesota (the other four states I’ve never been to are Nebraska, Alaska and West Virginia), but I won’t pretend that simply being in the state qualifies me to know any of its geography. I live in New York now, and I can barely find my house.

I had a bit of trouble around Cape Cod, with 77D/79D. I got the OKE at the end of AVERAGE JOKE as well as TKOS (78D. Boxing stats), but the rest couldn’t seem to come together for me. I wrongly guessed POLO for 77D. Perfume brand. I have never been a perfume wearer or buyer (my wife has one huge bottle of something that she’s owned for ages and rarely wears). The E in JOKE showed me just how much I know about the United States government, as for 79D. There are 435 in Cong., I put SENS. No? Not 435 senators nationwide? Are the senators not what make up Congress anyway? Apparently, there are 435 REPS in Congress, which for all I know is either Republicans or Representatives. Or both? Does a Republican Representative count as two of the 435 reps.? I’m not very political, nor am I terribly aware of much about politics. I have voted five times in my life — twice for Bill Clinton (for President in ‘92 and ‘96), once for John Kerry (for President in ‘04), recently for Obama in the New York primary, and years ago I voted against a referendum in Maine which was trying to make it illegal for homosexuals to teach in public schools. (And no, I didn’t vote for anyone in 2000. I should be ashamed of myself, thank you, XOP.) The picture to the right is apparently all 435 of them in 1962, attending the swearing-in ceremony of someone. I wanted to get a current photo, but this one appeared on the third screen of my Google image search, and that was enough screens for me.

I got sidetracked. I have never thought of an ABYSS as a gulf (93A), so with that blank, POLO and SENS in their places, I was lost on 89A. Certain hand-helds. PALMLON? I know about Palm Pilots (I own a Treo, bastard piece of junk), but maybe this was one I didn’t know. And 77A. Geom. point was merely another reminder that although I was good at math in the 1980s, I am completely useless now. PTS looked as good as the correct answer (CTR). Still does. (By the way, I think I left out the right answers: COTY is the perfume and PALMTOP is the hand-held.)

I continued to struggle in western Connecticut, just a few miles from the I-84/I-90 junction — which is eerily close (interstate-wise) to the clue numbers that troubled me: 85A. Disastrous drop (my wrong idea: FREE FALL; Blindauer and Orbach’s preference: NOSE DIVE) and 90A. ___-majesté (I never remember things I learn in puzzles, like LESE). In an effort to help me understand this last one, I have now just read up on it (and will promptly forget what I learned in about two minutes). But I also include this cartoon. I have to admit — I don’t find the cartoon at all funny. Does that mean I still don’t understand lese-majesté?

Some words that look as if they mean absolutely nothing (and may very well mean little more than that) include: TEY (14D. Christie contemporary), RIRE (38D. Laugh, in Lille), KIR (63D. White wine apéritif), KNT (112D. Chess piece: Abbr. — never have I seen this abbreviation), DETENTE (114A. Thaw), STYGIAN (117A. Hellish), and everyone’s favorite A?IL clue du jour (today, it was 82D. Seed cover : ARIL).

Can someone explain how GNU is 27A. Animal with an onomatopoetic name? Isn’t onomatopoeia when something sounds like what it does? Like “swish” or “boing” or “whack” or “thud” or “splash”? Do gnus make a noise that sounds like their name? I’m totally lost here.

That’ll do for today. We’re doing Episode 17 of “Fill Me In” tomorrow, so be sure to tune in. I’d like to extend our fond farewell to Linda G.’s blog, “Madness: Crossword and Otherwise,” on which she made her final post earlier this week. And last, I’d like to thank Ellen Ripstein for two recent mentions of us on her blog — and say “hooray!” to the notion that she is soon going to include listening to our podcast as part of her fabled terrace season. Ellen — thank you for listening. And if you don’t like an episode, just skip to the next one. We haven’t quite figured out how to be funny and clever every time we turn on the microphone.

See you Monday!

(Ryan, remember: This is your font for today. Use it wisely.)

Ryan here. I like how at the beginning of the post this font color is presented to me as a choice. By the end it has become “[my] font for today”.  In addition, I am not comfortable with the implication that my Cheetos shirt is hideous. It is, in fact, not hideous but brilliant and marvelous. Here I am having a grand old time wearing it. For those who can’t make it out, it says “Dangerously Cheesy” and features a caricature of beloved gadabout Chester Cheetah. Look how excited my wife is to be seen with me in public. I know it looks like she’s trying to get away from me but I can assure you that is most likely not the case.

I enjoyed this puzzle also. I would have no-googled it if not for the numerous wrong answers I typed in.

57D. Use shamelessly (MILK). I put BILK.

58D. Gray area?: Abbr. :(ANAT). I had ENAM which is an abbreviation for ENAMEL. This made perfect sense to me at the time.

55D. Converse competitor (AVIA). I put AVIS. Why is this wrong? Avis rents cars to Converse-wearing people, thus cutting down on walking which extends the life of the shoe which means people buy Converse products less frequently. Air tight logic.

Favorite clue:

17D. Music for a baseball team? (NONET). Great, great clue.  And in other baseball news, the Dodgers were held hitless for their entire game today but still managed to win.  The final score was 1-0.  Only the 5th time in modern baseball history that a team has won a game without getting a hit.

That’s it for tonight.  My shirt and I are going to bed.

Next stop, Monday.

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Gaaahhh!  One box away from a no-googling this Byron Walden puzzle.  Same old story.  The grid was complete, it wasn’t accepted and I couldn’t find my error.  I finally had to look at Orange’s blog to figure out where I went wrong.

30D. 100 aurar (KRONA).  I put KRONE.  Krone is the standard unit of currency in Norway and Denmark.  Krona is the standard unit of currency in Sweden and Iceland.  Seriously?  That’s like going to Canada and paying for everything in dollers.  This error also gave me SECRUM for 45A. Pelvic bone (SACRUM).  Again, very close, as you see a sacrum forms the posterior section of the pelvis and a secrum is the standard unit of currency in Finland.

I got everything else in this very enjoyable puzzle.  Perfect Saturday offering as I knew exactly 2 things on my first pass through the clues and gradually the whole thing came together.  What were those 2 things?

22A. “Lost” actor Somerhalder (IAN).  Just one of those names that’s stuck in my head.  I know Brian doesn’t want to hear it but Lost really got good again this past season.  It’s still totally ridiculous but very engaging.

31A. Playwright Peter of “Equus” (SHAFFER).  I was a little iffy on the spelling but I know this playwright well.  Amadeus is one of my favorites.

Hey, it’s Brian here, tacking on a few additional insights and/or useless wastes of space. I also knew these two answers on the first pass, although I couldn’t be sure I knew how to spell SHAFFER — could have been Schafer or Shaefer, for all I know.

This puzzle had a lot of great clues and answers.  My favorite section was the top left (Kretinga on a map of Lithuania).

1A. Holder of many a sandwich (ZIPLOCBAG).

15A. Piquant base for a sandwich (ONIONROLL).  I love onion rolls.  Seriously, what’s better than an onion roll?  You know what else I like that has onions?  Bialys.  They don’t get nearly as much press as bagels do but I’ll take a delicious, oniony bialy over a bagel every time.  Get yourself some.

17A. 2005 reality show hosted by Fabio (MRROMANCE).  There are a lot of competitions for which I’ll never be asked to participate.  World’s Tallest Triathelete, Neatest Vertical Handwriting, The Snowman who can Bench Press the Most Weight.  The list goes on.  But the top of that list is certainly reserved for Mr. Romance. (Ryan, I really want to photoshop this picture to have it include you.)

1D. Corps of corpses (ZOMBIES).  So what’s scarier?  The fast zombies or the slow zombies?

Over in the Kupiskis area I enjoyed:

10A.  They come with strings attached (HARPS).

18A. They come with strings attached (YOYOS).  I knew one of these was going to be YOYOS.

12D. The “I” of Elizabeth I? (ROYALWE).  Hands down, my favorite clue in the puzzle.

The Vilnius area had some good ones also.

57A. Ingredient in a mojito highball (SPEARMINT).  Why do I think this is spelled Speariment?  Have I been pronouncing it wrong this whole time?

59A. Goes yellow, say (TURNSTAIL).

61A. Will work? (OPEDESSAY).  I’m assuming this refers to George Will.  We also would have accepted the answer MOST BORING BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT BASEBALL.

Here are the things I absolutely did not know.

19A. Steam-driven devices that pump water from mines (BEAMENGINES). For the longest time, I could not parse this answer… Be a mengines? Beamen Gines? I couldn’t figure out if it was a proper name, a person’s name, whatever. And even now that I know what it is — I don’t know what it is.

35A. “Gilgamesh,” e.g. (EPOS).  A word I have never heard before.

39A. Heart failures? (RENEGES).  I’m not sure I totally get this.  Oh wait, I think it has something to do with cards.

46A. Eponymous oilman Halliburton (ERLE).  Interesting little fact to know.

49A. Janissary commander (AGA).  The free dictionary tells me a janissary is a soldier in an elite Turkish guard organized in the 14th century and abolished in 1826.

51A.  Item called a geyser in Britain (WATERHEATER).  Well, I figured it had something to do with water.

4D. 1785 invention of England’s Edmund Cartwright (LOOM).  Looms have only been around since 1785?  That doesn’t seem right to me. Was this any loom? Or a particular kind of loom? I did a couple quick internet searches to try and be more smarter about things I didn’t know, and I may have seen (under duress of being very, very tired) that it was an electric loom…?

28D. “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” instrument (CELESTA).  This clue brought together 2 of my absolute favorite topics: Music and Things I’ve Never Heard Of.  Here is a picture of a celesta.  Explain to me why this isn’t a piano.

A celesta isn’t a piano because of a number of things. While both instruments use a mechanism in which pressing a key triggers a hammer to swing back (inside the console), a piano’s hammer strikes against strings that have been stretched to achieve certain pitches. A celesta’s hammer strikes back against metal plates, shaped and cast as to be certain pitches. I’m not 100% certain, but I think that the material of the hammer itself may be different as well — a piano’s hammer is a stiff felt-like material; the hammer of the celesta might also be metal (?).

And what I think makes this such a good puzzle is the obscure clues where positioned in such a way with the more gettable clues that a not more smarter person like myself was able to figure out the grid.  Great job.

A quick note about the live crossword battle royale.  I think it’s going to happen.  Somewhere in NYC and hopefully this summer.  More details to come on the blog and podcast.   Please continue to email us or comment about your interest in atttending, constructing a puzzle or both.

Next stop, Sunday.

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• Main Entry: ocher
• Variant(s): or ochre \??-k?r\
• Function: noun
• Etymology: Middle English oker, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French ocre, from Latin ochra, from Greek ?chra, from feminine of ?chros yellow
• Date: 14th century

1. an earthy usually red or yellow and often impure iron ore used as a pigment
2. the color of ocher; especially : the color of yellow ocher

• ocher·ous \??-k(?-)r?s\ or ochre·ous \??-k(?-)r?s, -kr?-?s\ adjective

Apparently, they’re interchangeable. Great. (All the “yellows” you see in the above picture are considered by the vast internet to be “ocher.” Also, the brownish border around everything is ocher as well, according to some Pantone-ish color palette I found in one search attempt.)

Although I had trouble with the spelling of OCHRES (6D. Canyon tones), my big stumbling block happened at 36D. Be discordant (JAR). Really? Jar? Hmm. Also, I pulled a typical Brian move by being completely unable to process the “Abbr” portion of 42A. Schedule maker: Abbr., and therefore, I continued to be completely unable to figure out that I-S actually could make some sense. Speaking of the IRS, I need to complete my taxes one of these days…

I have to say, this puzzle was chock full of wonderful answers. I got off to a very hot start, and had the whole northwest (except maybe one square at approximately Yreka, CA) and the whole southeast (except the bottom-most, right-most square) rather quickly. 1A. Luau lighting is of course a TIKI TORCH, 15A. Singer who plays herself in “D.C. Cab” is IRENE CARA, who makes a doubly rare appearance (one-bly: both names; dou-bly: it has nothing to do with “Fame”). I bow to the creator of this gem of a puzzle with respectful humility (9D. HAT IN HAND).

32D. Ticker with headlines is a NEWS CRAWL – my old television had shifted its image so weirdly that any news crawl I saw only showed the very tops of letters… It was sort of like doing a cryptogram puzzle, as I had to decipher the text based on a strange code in which letters only looked like the tops of letters. 56A. Norman Rockwell specialty is AMERICANA. My favorite is the one where the three umpires are deciding whether or not to play in the rain. I think Ryan has that print in his dining room. Speaking of Ryan — what happens when our podcast WEARS THIN (59A. Stops being funny, say)? And don’t you dare answer that it can’t because it would have had to be funny in the first place. Don’t you dare. I’ll unsubscribe you right now. (Okay, no I won’t.)

The southwest was more challenging for me, in that I had many ideas, but nothing seemed to fit. 24D. What a potential player must pass is a SCREEN TEST, not a STRESS TEST. 25D. Summons, e.g. is a COURT ORDER, and not a CALL TO -DE-, whatever that was supposed to become. 31A. Future star turned out not to be CAMEO (my first guess) or COMET (my second guess) but COMER, which I don’t care for without its “UP AND” prefix. And we had our daily dose of Make Brian Feel Like He Has No Business Being A Musician with 58A. Repetition symbol (SEGNO), which I decided could end with any of at least eight available vowels.

I was useless in the northeast, which is sad since I’ve lived my entire life in that geographic region. 12D. Get all sentimental (TURN TO MUSH) and 13D. Big sticker? (ELMER’S GLUE) are a delight. If only they had come to the forefront of my brain sooner. 10D. Loungewear stymied me in that I was looking for something that I alone could wear to a lounge — PAJAMAS! But no. Apparently, it’s CAFTANS. I have never worn a caftan. Never once.

I just got an email from Ryan asking if I was blogging now, so I’ll stop and let him add on whatever he feels like adding on. In red, apparently. I have no control over anything.

See you Saturday.

Brian doesn’t like the red, nobody else likes the pirate. Not only did people not like the pirate, it seemed to anger and disappoint everyone. I guess I won’t be doing that again. So here’s a new color for everybody which is either blue or purple or brown or whatever. People tell me they can see a 45 in the circle below. I see a bunch of dots. Personally, I think it’s an elaborate ruse. Not sure what the goal of the ruse is but I can assure you it’s nefarious.

Anyway, I thought this Brad Wilber puzzle was great. I no-googled it in under an hour. I actually got the northwest (Urumqi on a map of China) in about 30 seconds but then my supervisor gave me a job so pretending to work slowed the whole process down. But the whole puzzle was great fun and full of fascinating fill.

Like Brian I misspelled OCHRES which I thought to be an extension of my colorblindness. And I also put in PAJAMAS for loungewear. Honestly, CAFTANS don’t look that comfortable. Kind of a big sheet with a head hole.

I got TIKITORCH right away. I love all things tiki. I have tiki shirts, tiki mugs, tiki signs, tiki music. I love the whole tiki lifestyle and hope to turn our basement in our future house into a full blown tiki lounge. A great website for tiki stuff is Tiki Farm. They sell a few things by my favorite tiki artist, Shag.

The Qiqihar area was a bit more difficult but once I got 10A. Do the dishes? (CATER) everything fell into place. When I was a kid, I went to school with a girl who would cover her hands in ELMERS GLUE, wait for it to dry and then peel it off. Even as an 8 year old I found this behavior to be bizarre.

The key to the Lhasa area was 26. Sight in Lancaster County, Pa. (AMISHBUGGY). The Amish appear in two of my favorite Harrison Ford movies. Witness, of course. But also The Frisco Kid, a wonderful movie where he plays a Wild West bank robber who helps a rabbi played by Gene Wilder get to San Francisco. Such a wonderful movie and I’m still waiting for the sequel.

47D. Radio code word before 43-Down (ROMEO). 43D. Radio code word after 47-Down (SIERRA). Romeo Sierra? Please explain.

60A. Billet-doux suggestion (TRYST). I don’t understand this one either. Has anybody tried those Rosetta Stone language learning CDs? I really want to have a working knowledge of some other languages. The Rosetta Stone stuff seems great but they’re crazy expensive.

Really and truly, a great, fun puzzle. One of my favorites since we started this blog.

Next stop, Saturday.

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What with the co-blogging thing currently in beta-test mode, I have to open with who I am.

I’m Brian. I’m tall. And now, very very hot. The air conditioning in my office works, yes. But it doesn’t work at the same time as the air conditioning in the bedroom. Both rooms (and the bathroom and the kitchen) are all on one fuse. Hooray, old buildings. So if the wife has the air on in the bedroom (as she does now), I cannot have the air on in the office. Blecha.

And I’m looking for a better clue. I need to figure out multi-letter squares quicker. How do I do this? It doesn’t seem to matter that I come up with answers that don’t fit and simply discard the ideas, such as 4D. Knocks to the ground (LA[YS L]OW) or 21A. New York’s ___ Building, tallest in the world in 1930 (CHR[YSL]ER). I knew both of these answers, but abandoned them because I didn’t see the trick.

Oh, the trick. Yes. Well, it’s somewhat circular in the cluing, with 31A. See 7-down and then 7D. Legendary name in 31-across. The answers, respectively, are FASHION and YVES SAINT LAURENT. And then the trick, as indicated above, is that YSL gets a single square where used. The other theme answers were:

• 17A. Rube’s opposite : CIT[Y SL]ICKER
• 11D. Orchid variety : LAD[Y SL]IPPER
• 54A. Check attachments : PA[YSL]IPS
• 36D. “Ben-Hur” extra : GALLE[Y SL]AVE
• 60A. Extra shuteye : BEAUT[Y SL]EEP
• 53D. Lock opening : KE[YSL]OT

Another pair of self-referential clues simply confused me into thinking they were somehow part of the theme… and then even when I realized they weren’t, I couldn’t figure out what order they went in: 37D. With 8-down, one who grew up on MTV, maybe and 8D. See 37-down (GEN XER). Nothing thematic there, just roundabout cluing to make my head spin.

23A. Submarine base? is SALAMI, not SAFARI, in case you were wondering. I may try to eat some salami for a later photo op. This morning, I got a picture of me eating an omelet in honor of yesterday’s puzzle. I’ll post it as soon as I can figure out how the camera feature on my phone works.

Rather than clog up this post with links to random images, I’ll use this space to say thank you to everyone who passed on fond wishes to my wife for her surgery today. The operation was successful. She’s home now, and although struggling with some pain (when oh when does the Percoset kick in, she wonders?), she’s in good spirits.

Ryan…? (And with that introduction, I also encourage you to try a less squint-worthy color for your addendum.)

So Brian doesn’t like my choice of colors. Fine. I’m colorblind so I don’t know how best to do this. For now, the rest of my addendum will be in pirate.

It tookst me a long, long time t’ spot th’ rebus in this puzzle. Fer th’ Extra shuteye clue I put in BEAUTYNAP which fit an’ th’ P worked wi’ RASPED so I thought I be fine. I be nay sure what clued me into th’ rebus but e’en after I found ‘t this puzzle still tookst a long time fer me t’ complete.

I did make one major error:

32D. Some batteries (AAS). I put AAA which gave me ANAIA fer 38A. First name in erotic writin’ (ANAIS) which certainly looked wrong but I be sure AAA be starboard. I had th’ whole grid filled but jus’ couldna find me error. Nobody had yet posted an answer list so I wasn`t sure if I really had an error or if th’ applet be jus’ havin’ trouble acceptin’ th’ rebus. Plus, I couldna use google on accoun’ o’ I be at work an’ canna very well start searchin’ fer erotic writers on th’ internet. Finally, I emailed Brian fer some help an’ he clued me in. Oy. That almost drove me o’er th’ edge.

46A. “___ Mistress,” 1982 horror flick (SATANS). This seems like a great movie. From wikipedia: Satan`s Mistress be a horror movie from 1982 about a frustrated housewife, Lisa (played by actress Lana Wood), who begins havin’ nightly trysts wi’ a tall, dark stranger (played by Kabir Bedi o’ Octopussy) who turns ou’ t’ be a ghost from th’ other side.

63A. Ri’er t’ th’ English Channel (ORNE). Another river? Good god. How many rivers be thar? 20? 30?

29D. One o’ th’ Jacksons (TITO). One o’ me top 5 favorite Jacksons. Here he be wi’ his laddie. `Tis like they’s twins.

44D. Giant among Giants (OTT). Welcome aft, Mel. `Tis been almost a moon.

60D. Actress ___ Lin’ o’ “Sky Captain an’ th’ World o’ Next high tide’” (BAI). Did ere be seein’ this movie? ‘t looked kinda cool in th’ previews but I try t’ avoid anythin’ that has Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘t. I be lily livered I`ll get sucked into th’ gapin’ hole o’ th’ lass’ talentless soul.

This entry wouldna be complete without a picture o’ th’ man hisself.

Next avast, Fridee.

Shipmate translation courtesy o’:

http://www.syddware.com/cgi-bin/pirate.pl

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Rob Cook’s offering in the New York Times had just the right kind of theme for both a Wednesday and for my solving style. It wasn’t blatantly obvious, and it wasn’t an after-the-fact theme (the kind you only figure out once you’re done with the puzzle). In this grid, he took words that are standard RE- prefix words, but gave them new definitions for two word phrases:

• 17A. Talk in one’s sleep? : REST ORATION
• 24A. Building the Berlin Wall? : RED ACTION
• 34A. Equestrian addiciton? : REIN HABIT
• 46A. Back burner? : REAR RANGE
• 54A. Literacy campaign? : READ MISSION

Additionally, there was a nice combination of things I knew with things I didn’t know. 8D. Nymphs of myth are apparently NAIADS (and Wikipedia, Knower Of Half The Things Howard Barkin Knows, tells me that there are 26 individual Naiads). Here’s a picture of one of them. But it crossed with AVIARY (15A. Building with a lot of wings), which I liked (even though I’ve only ever been to outdoor aviaries, which are not really buildings).

We had a reference to ALIENS (20A. 1986 Sci-fi sequel), which is a slight departure from the overused ALIEN. I didn’t like the sequel as much as the original. I really didn’t like the third one. Was there a fourth? Or a fifth? I gave up.

39A. Long-horned goat. This is an IBEX. I like the word “ibex,” and I just like goats in general. I have nothing really to say here. Apparently, there is an album somewhere called “Ibex Throne.” There’s also some YouTube stuff about them. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4RLrLCzOCQ — I still don’t know how to imbed video, even though Ryan explained it to me.

I’m supposed to be up to date on eating puzzle food, but I haven’t done much of this since the HoHos. I will try to have some COGNAC or MADEIRA or a couple of OMELETS if I get a chance…

In other news, my wife is having her long-awaited ACL reconstruction surgery today. If you come by this blog, take a moment to wish her well. Doing so will accomplish two things. One, it will cheer up my wife. Two, it will validate (to her) what I do here. And a third surprise thing it will do: It will let me and Ryan know if you’re out there. So stop by, and say hi. Either a comment here, or an email to us at rbxblog@gmail.com.

In case you missed our latest podcast, you can check it out here: CLICK ME! I’M A PODCAST!

And in other news, Ryan and I are going to try joint-blogging. One of us will post something about a puzzle, and the other may add to it as time goes by, instead of writing a whole separate post on the same puzzle. We’ll see how it works. If you have a strong opinion about this either way, let us know. We like to know what you’re thinking, even if it might hurt Ryan’s feelings. Heck, we like to know what you’re thinking even if it has nothing to do with puzzles. Or us. Just write. We like mail.

See you Thursday…

Hey, Ryan here. So we’re doing this combined blogging thing. Is this confusing? Do you like it? Or has everybody who’s going to look at this already looked at it?

I think there were at least a couple more Alien movies after Aliens. I only saw the third one which I think was called Alien³which doesn’t make any sense. How do you cube an Alien? Hmm, that sounds like a chapter title of an intergalactic cookbook.

Ok, work is done so I’m going home. I’m glad I was able to append such weighty topics to Brian’s entry. We’d love some feedback on this new feature.

Next stop, Thursday.

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Good puzzle by Barry C. Silk although Brian and I have to come up with a name for the type of theme that can really only be enjoyed after puzzle completion. These themes are usually quite clever but don’t add much to the solving experience.

67A. Something you can do to the starts of 17-, 21-, 37-, 53- and 60-Across (DRAW)

17A. Hotel offering (BATHTOWEL)

21A. Bow-taking occasion (CURTAINCALL)

37A. Poker face (BLANKEXPRESSION)

53A. Cinema offering (PICTURESHOW)

60A. Flintlock need (GUNPOWDER)

Again, very clever and well done but just not my favorite type of theme.

I had a big misstep here which added 3 or 4 minutes to my time.

5D. “If asked, yes” (IWOULD). I put ICOULD which seems to be a valid answer to me. Of course that gave me COMB for 15A. Birth place (WOMB) which gave me slight pause when I first looked at it but not enough to do anything about it. I do have a bit of a problem with that clue. Does birth happen in the womb? I thought that’s where people are before they’re born. Or are they saying a womb is one of the many places involved in a birth? Well, whatever the meaning of the clue, the answer is most certainly not COMB. I eventually found my answer and was able to finish the puzzle.

16A. French-speaking African nation (GABON). Continuing my own personal theme of geographic ignorance, GABON makes an appearance as a country I’ve never heard of before.

26A. Charisse of “Singin’ in the Rain” (CYD). She just passed away last week.

46A. Grier of “Jackie Brown” (PAM). Tarantino’s most underrated film in my opinion. Not as great as Pulp Fiction or the Kill Bills but still very good and features a fantastic performance by Robert Forster.

1D. Internet-on-the-tube company, formerly (WEBTV). Why formerly? This company still exists. Oh wait, I get it, Microsoft bought them out.

10D. Friend of Peppermint Patty (MARCIE). What’s that you say? What would the Peanuts gang look like if they were drawn in the Manga style? Would it be disturbing and make me sleep with the light on? Quite possibly.

35D. Leaf-to-branch angle (AXIL).  Weren’t we just talking about this last week?

Well, I’m sure you already know this but Episode #16 of the podcast (now titled Fill Me In) has been uploaded.  Enjoy.

Next stop, Wednesday.

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We have a name!

What more do you need? This week features the first (and perhaps last) installment of Ryan and Brian’s version of “Point/Counterpoint,” as well as all your favorite podcast features:

• Viewer mail
• References to Dan Feyer, Winner of the C Division
• Ryan and Brian have still not been invited to Will Shortz’s house for a barbecue

And a first for us:

• A fan phones the studio for a live, on-the-air discussion!

All that and more in our sixteenth installment of Fill Me In. Enjoy!

 

 Fill Me In #016: Six puzzles for the price of seven. [38:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oat.

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